If you're happy at work and you know it take this survey

You're happy at work, right? Want to test yourself just to be sure?
The Wall Street Journalcalls attention to a new survey, called “Happiness at Work,” that was created by a consultancy co-founded by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.
The 47-question survey, which takes about 10 minutes to complete, has been filled out by 11,000 users in more than 90 countries so far.
Based on the survey's findings to date, The Journal says you're more likely to be happy at work if you:

Work for a smaller company with fewer than 100 people. (You're 25% more likely to be happy at work in a small company than one with more than 1,000 people.)

Supervise others. (Managers and supervisors are 27% more likely to be happier at work than the managed.)

Work at a job that involves caregiving or direct service. (Caregivers are 75% more likely to be happy than those working in sales.)

Work in a skilled trade. (Skilled workers are 50% more likely to be happy than unskilled workers.)

Are not in your 40s. (Older people are significantly happier at work, with the least happy being those in their 40s.)
After completion, “survey respondents receive personalized reports intended to help plot the way forward—particularly if, like many workers, they feel that work is a test of endurance instead of a labor of love,” The Journal says.

Substance over style

Glenn Starkman's new workplace is elite, but the surroundings are extremely pedestrian.
Dr. Starkman, a professor of physics and director of the Institute for the Science of Origins at Case Western Reserve University, currently is working in Geneva, Switzerland, at CERN, one of the world's leading laboratories for particle physics. He's blogging about the experience monthly for Scientific American.
CERN is “nestled among the vineyards outside Geneva, surrounded by the lush slopes of the Jura mountains on one side and the rugged snow-capped Alps on the other,” Dr. Starkman writes. “CERN is not just the Rome to which all European (and many non-European) roads in particle physics lead, but the gathering place of the exiles awaiting the return to Zion (or Batavia, IL or Menlo Park, CA), if only the U.S. Congress would foot the bill.”
Straddling as it does the Swiss and French borders, “you would imagine this contemporary Tower of Babel to be a place where fine Gallic taste and precision Helvetic expertise combine to create a cosmopolitan scientific paradise — a workplace that is both beautiful and functional,” according to Dr. Starkman. “Nahh. If only the fictional accounts of luxury and high design held the least grain of truth. Dan Brown: dream on.”
CERN's buildings are drab and designed in the Brutalist style. Hallways are dimly lit. Walls are off-beige.
“The street names, honoring illustrious physicists of the past, attempt to provide a touch of character, but they connect buildings labeled only by number. 33-5-4-58-3-50-500. A secret code? A mathematical sequence describing the properties of a new family of fundamental particles? No,” he writes. “The building-by-building route from reception, past my office, to the enticingly named Restaurant 1.”

This and that

No, really, I have the flu: About 30% of workers called in sick sick during the past year even when they weren't ill, according to a CareerBuilder survey.
Not surprising, the survey found the holiday season tends to be the busiest time for sick calls, reports Workforce, a sister publication of Crain's Cleveland Business.
The survey collected information from nearly 2,500 hiring managers and HR professionals, and nearly 4,000 workers.
Among the more creative explanations employees gave for their requests for sick leave:

Employee said her dog was having a nervous breakdown

Employee's dead grandmother was being exhumed for a police investigation

Employee's toe was stuck in a faucet

Employee was upset after watching "The Hunger Games"

Employee got sick from reading too much
Slow climb: For female CFOs, count this as a sign of progress.
“The Fortune 250 now counts 20 female chief financial officers, up from only one at the start of 2001, according to research from executive search firm CTPartners,” reports another Crain's sister publication, Staffing Industry Analysts. Half of those CFOs have been named since 2009.
Thirty-five percent of those women held CFO roles in other companies before being hired into their current positions, and 65% were internal hires. Thirty percent had 19 years' internal experience before being named CFO.
Money's tight: Reuters reports that as cash-strapped U.S. cities and states struggle to address gaping budget holes, “a long-honored benefit for public-sector workers has come into the cross-hairs of budget cutters: retiree health insurance.”
The news service says a “growing number of states and cities are eliminating or reducing health coverage for retirees, a benefit that has long fallen by the wayside for most private-sector workers.”
But the coverage, which has meant that most retired public workers have all their medical bills fully paid, “is expensive and hugely underfunded,” Reuters reports. Because health coverage does not typically have the strong legal protections that hamstring changes to public pension benefits, it is easier for governments to scale back.
The trend could leave millions of public workers with thousands of dollars in unanticipated health care costs.
"In 20 years, very few people will have this benefit," says Dennis M. Daley, a public management professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C.
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